Come and see!

School tours are beginning!

Imagine walking down a hallway and opening a door to this scene from kindergarten day 7!  Remember this is from the seventh day these children have EVER been in school!  Our wonderful teachers consistently create a culture of learning and respecting others.  So exciting to see!  Please email me at richard.clark@partnershipcle.org or text or call me at 216.409.709.  Visits are available to both our schools:  Archbishop Lyke and/or St. Thomas Aquinas.  The school day begins at 8 AM and ends at 4 PM.  The scene above was filmed at Archbishop Lyke.

Face the brutal facts!

Is it OK that black eighth graders aren’t proficient in math and reading?

The question above was asked in a recent Wall Street Journal editiorial.

Why do we keep making excuses?  We need to face this issue in all schools:  public, private, charter, homeschool...you name it!  Our American cities have not faced these brutal facts...instead reasons are given for decades of slow or no progress!  The time for excuses is over.  Partnership Schools is facing this head on.  We seek constant, year after year, improvement in reading and math proficiency.  We have just introduced a curriculum in fourth grade that will lead to our scholars taking algebra in eighth grade.  We want all our scholars to have the freedom to succeed in high school and complete a four year college degree.  We have a long way to go!  The following graph is taken from the National Assessment of Educational Progress/Our Nation's Report Card website.

Return to in person instruction for all!

4th Graders learning together

A recent blog by Maggie Johnson, who was one of the leaders for our opening week of professional development in Cleveland outlines what is ahead of us.  Cleveland's nearly 40% increase in students last year meant that we needed to create a completely new culture for all our students with a great number of them having never stepped into a Catholic school.  This coming year all of our students will begin on the same page!  Our teachers have been through a year of rigorous training and have familiarized themselves with new curriculum across board. 

If you clean it, they will swing!

 School starts today, enrollment up again!

After some pretty hectic weeks of cleaning, repairing, putting in new water bottle fillers and completely new furniture for classrooms and offices at both St. Thomas Aquinas and Archbishop Lyke, students return this Monday.  On the heals of an historic enrollment growth last school year (~40% up), this year as we stand yesterday, we are up 4%!  Typically we will admit more students in the first week or so.  From 2015 to the beginning of last year the two schools had suffered a 35% decrease in enrollment.

If you clean it, they will swing!

Yesterday, 15 volunteers descended on an abandoned playground adjacent to Archbishop Lyke School.  The Harvard Community Center received a beautiful playground several years ago.  They do fantastic work, but are under resourced to say the least.  They could not afford the proper mulch to pass their insurance inspection.  It was padlocked for over 5 years.  You can see the before and after pictures!

And so it begins...

Here come the volunteeers!

   

Backrow:  Dr. Susan Lasch, Maureen Bagley

From left to right: Mark Biche (Chief Playground Officer), Shana, Julie barry, Denny Dunn (looks like gorgeous George), Marc Ciccarelli, Matt Roggenburk, Steve Nock, Tom McIntyre, Neil Barry, Gerard Daher, and Mark McNamara

Inculding St. Dominic's second grader, Sam!

After!!

And before we could lock the gate, children materialized and went right to the swings!!

As a few of us were cleaning up the barbecue set up (yes, Riche Burgers were provided!), the maintenance man from Harvard Community came over and we offered him a Riche and he told us how great everything looks, then someone said, "We need a master gardener!"  He said, "Just a minute I have one."  He soon returned with Rich Goudreau who is a master gardener and Director of Community Development at Harvard Community Services Center.  All of this before noon!

This is why we do it!!

Partnership Schools Cleveland is born!!

Diocesan Announcement

            

Click here!!!

Thank you to Dr. Frank O'Linn and Fr. Don Oleksiak for believing in this model.  To cast their nets out into the deep at this time demonstrates how faith can indeed move mountains.  Here is a link to the Partnership Schools NY announcement:  https://www.partnershipnyc.org/the-partnership-expands/.

My first contact with Partnership Schools was in December of 2017.  As of this week, two and a half years later, we have officially launched Partnership Schools Cleveland!  Here is the first mention of our new entity in a national publication, The Washington Post on June 12.  The article was talking about how closures of Catholic schools are hurting the minorities that attend them:

Here is why we do it!

Twenty percent of students in the nation’s 6,000 Catholic schools are minorities, including Hispanics, African Americans and Asians. The numbers are much higher in what’s called the Partnership Schools, a network of nine Catholic schools in Harlem and the South Bronx in New York and in Cleveland. In addition to the coursework usually found in public schools, schools in the partnership stress four core values — integrity, humility, hard work and service. 

Enrollees at these nine schools are 67 percent Hispanic and 31 percent African American.

So at a most crucial time in Catholic education, particularly in city settings, Cleveland brings a new model to bear on the problem!  Starting with two schools this coming year, our hope is to grow to as many as six!

Thank you!!

As many of you know we needed to secure in cash or pledges a total of $3M by June 1.  We could only begin actually asking for significant gifts once the agreement was approved by then Bishop Perez which he did on February 13, 2020.  Three and one-half months later we got our last commitment on  May 28 to get over the mark!

What now?

We are working on several fronts.  Next week we will begin to work on some of the physical improvements and repairs that we have identified.  Our hope is to have our buildings ready by August!

Enrollment is also a front-burner item.  Presently both schools have strong re-enrollment numbers (~90%) and total enrollment is at last year's level.  As with many city schools, summer is still a time where more families enroll.  Our hope is to increase enrollment at both schools and it appears we are on track. Professional development of leadership and faculty will continue with more emphasis on the new curriculum in the upcoming weeks.

Upcoming weeks

I will begin to set up shop in St. Thomas and Archbishop Lyke!  Our hope is to bring people for visits, practicing the latest safety guidelines from the CDC (bring your mask).  We are considering some sort of digital town hall.  Let me know what you think about that.  We would present more specific plans and begin to introduce our team.

Final Reflection

In response to the trauma and pain, we rely on our belief that we are made for each other in the image and likeness of God. The Trinity, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are the epitome of community; no one is greater than the other as they all serve a specific purpose. The world needs more of this idea of solidarity.

Read more from Vincent Hale, a teacher from New York Partnership Schools  https://www.partnershipnyc.org/whats-going-on/.

 

Jean Paul Sartre: by any means necessary

Today I was priviliged to hear Rev. Otis Moss who worked closely with Dr. King, who presided at the wedding of Rev. Moss and his wife, deliver a talk at the City Club. His theme was the need for a strong central city...without that the rest of the area will collapse. One of the factors (he name seven or more) that will help build a strong city is public education. I couldn't agree with him more. I would like to change the typical view though. The term, public school, today means a school that are supported by local, state and federal government that do not charge tuition.

The speeches of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. were a part of my childhood. My brother, Bill, attended the rally in Washington in 1963 and heard the "I Have a Dream" speech live! When I was accepted to attend Georgetown University in the fall of 1969, the country had suffered the loss of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy and Vietnam was consuming our nation. The freshmen reading list including the Autobiography of Malcolm X. I remember seeing a picture of Malcolm X in Life Magazine holding a gun with a caption of "By Any Means Necessary!" I must admit I was scared by that pronouncement. I read the book and began to get a glimpse into a world I really did not know.


34 years later I had left my position as principal of Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland which I had held for twelve years, and I was driving down Superior Avenue on Cleveland's East Side. I was scouting out the neighborhood which was going to be home for a new school we were starting. I noticed painted in Day Glo orange on the slats of a cyclone fence the words: "Revolution is the only solution." Lord, I thought, I was back in the urban maelstrom of Lima, Peru! I must admit that scared me too. This time, there was no book to read--in a way we were writing our own. Five years later I have begun to get a glimpse into a world where slogans such as "By any means necessary" and "Revolution is the only solution" arise from the people.


"I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary." — Jean Paul Sartre, Dirty Hands: act 5, scene 3. 1963

Jean Paul Sartre perhaps puts this whole question into a larger context. Malcolm X, two years later says this: "We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary."— Malcolm X, 1965.

I cannot bring myself to advocating violence, in this regard I am a follower of Jesus, King, and Gandhi. However working for five years at E. 61st and St. Clair allows me to see the absolute futility of life without having the chance for a decent education. That chance has to be NOW!

What if we have some fun with that term and we say a public school is any school that educates the public. In Peru, all schools receive government subsidy. Even Catholic schools receive funding for everything save religion teachers and texts. The closest we have to this in the United States was the GI Bill. It could be used by the student to attend and pay for any college, public or private. In the end, the idea was that everybody could have the opportunity!

As Cleveland begins to develop STEM schools, magnet schools like the three at John Hay or Cleveland School of the Arts the chance for a quality and safe education rises significantly. My question now is quite simple, "What happens to the thousands of kids who can't get into those schools???" Why can't we have a much wider vision of education of the public and look to excellent schools already in existence to help with the severe lack of quality now? Perhaps they are charter schools or private schools that are not tuition driven that could help educate thousands more now. For me the best way to look at this is to ask the question from the family's point of view: "I have an eighth grader now, where can I send her in the fall of 2009 and be sure that the school is safe, effective and will have demonstrated student learning and success?" the answer cannot be, "We are working on it...give us time." That child today doesn't have any time. Here is an analogy which might bring to light the absolute urgency of this education crisis. Suppose avian flu broke out pandemically right now. Thousands of people needing medical attention all at once. Would not all hospitals be part of the solution? Even if in some there were rabbis, or Roman Catholic Masses going on, or Imans counselling? What if they had Saints in their names? Would it matter if at those hospitals you could get the needed treatment?

It is my belief that the urban education crisis is as urgent and deadly as the Plague. If we do not do something right now we will pay for it dearly in the decades to come.

This is scary...planets are aligning!

I had lunch today at Bo Loong (E. 40th and St. Clair) with three local urban educators. They too saw the present system of delivering education in urban areas as unworkable. Bill Gates called American seconday education obsolete a few year ago...at that time I thought, "Well, that might be an overstatement for effect..." Guess what...he was right. Urban districts are creating small really good schools within the system, but they are not sustainable...nor, quite honestly, that public.

Two possible new directions:

The Essential Schools movement (http://www.essentialschools.org/) have these common principles:

The Common Principles (abbrev.)
1. Learning to use one's mind well
2. Less is More, depth over coverage
3. Goals apply to all students
4. Personalization
5. Student-as-worker, teacher-as-coach
6. Demonstration of mastery
7. A tone of decency and trust
8. Commitment to the entire school
9. Resources dedicated to teaching and learning
10.Democracy and equity

The Small Schools Movement have these factors as basic to a good school:

http://www.smallschoolsproject.org/

At the Small Schools Project, we define small schools as those that share a set of common characteristics:
They are small. Few effective small schools serve more than 400 students, and many serve no more than 200 students.
They are small. They are autonomous. The school community—whether it shares a building, administrator, or some co-curricular activities with other schools—retains primary authority to make decisions affecting the important aspects of the school.
They are distinctive and focused rather than comprehensive. They do not try to be all things to all people.
They are personal. Every student is known by more than one adult, and every student has an advisor/advocate who works closely with her and her family to plan a personalized program. Student-family-advisor relationships are sustained over several years.
They are committed to equity in educational achievement by eliminating achievement gaps between groups of students while increasing the achievement levels of virtually all students.
They use multiple forms of assessment to report on student accomplishment and to guide their efforts to improve their own school.
They view parents as critical allies, and find significant ways to include them in the life of the school community.
They are schools of choice for both students and teachers, except in some rural areas, and are open, without bias, to any students in a community. There are important benefits of small schools, including student achievement, personalization, cost effectiveness, safety benefits, and others.

These are just two views of a new kind of school. An analogy that was used to explain what happens when technology paradigms shift can really apply to present day educational systems...characterized as big, centralized, teacher centered (via unions), unacceptable graduation rates...on and on. When steam engines were introduced to the great sailing ships, it was very confusing to the sailors. Most steam engines were put on ships, but they kept the sails! Check out the picture above!

We are at a time now when we have to get rid of the sails and get the steam engine! Unfortunately, large urban districts think that adding sails, changing the size, color or shape of the sails is the solution...no, the solution is something so different that we may not recognize just what it will be...but whatever it will be, students will learn!